Dalrymple on Jaipur Lit Fest

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/jan/17/my-week-william-dalrymple

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et it is amazing how incapable literary geniuses can be of the simplest activities such as arriving at an airport in time or catching connecting flights. Applying for visas and filling in forms seems to be a particular problem for men and women who effortlessly win Nobel, Booker and Pulitzer prizes. Each year, at least two or three forget to apply at all, throwing the whole festival into confusion.

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One of the things people like best about Jaipur is that we are completely egalitarian. There are no reserved spaces for grandees, no green room or specially roped enclosure for our authors – they mingle with the crowds and eat with them on a first-come, first-served basis. Salman Rushdie, who made his first public appearance in India since the publication of The Satanic Verses, as well as Bollywood stars such as Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan, have all mixed in the crowds without bodyguards or VIP enclosures. In as hierarchical a country as India, this is all rather radical.

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t is this egalitarian ethic that excites the Indian press much more than the literary aspect of the festival. Last year, there was a flurry of press when Vikram was seen eating on the ground as there was no space for him on any of the dining tables, and when one senior Indian literary editor found herself joining the queue for the ladies behind Tina Brown.

But the biggest excitement of the last year was when an Australian volunteer usher rather peremptorily asked two beautiful young women to move out of the aisle as they were blocking an exit, apparently unaware that the women in question were the adored Bollywood goddess Nandita Das and Julia Roberts. To their great credit, both women moved immediately and without complaint.